Checking the cracks on the first Orion capsule to fly.
Checking the cracks on the first Orion capsule to fly.
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Checking the cracks on the first Orion capsule to fly.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
How much larger is this space capsule than the Apollo capsule, and how much more of a load can this vehicle handle? Looks like they(the engineers) have a handle on stress testing and understanding the stresses that this vehicle will encounter.
Its not how much more load it can handle.
Its why they couldn’t manufacturer it in the same way they did the Apollo. Which obviously did handle all its pressure and didn’t need repairs like this one did.
The root cause here is almost certainly overreliance on computer-aided engineering software, specifically, whatever package was employed to do finite element analysis of the cracked part. FEA has been around quite awhile and practicing engineers don’t typically doubt the veracity of results obtained from numerical load/stress simulations. Obviously, in this case, that faith in crunched numbers was at least somewhat misplaced. More disturbing than the unfortunate finding that a real-world object subjected to real-world stresses doesn’t behave quite like its numerically simulated virtual counterpart is the action taken – or not taken, more to the point. Instead of revisiting the design of the partially-failed component, NASA finds it adequate to just slap on some patches and plough ahead. One has to wonder whether NASA would accept a similar course of action from, say, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada or Boeing were a similar test failure to manifest itself on the crewed Dragon, Dreamchaser or CST-100? I’m betting not. And of course the hard-core NASA fanboys and the Congressional NASA porkmeisters would have a field day. As things stand, the sound of crickets is all we here from those quarters.